Reading one word at a time

Monthly Archives: February 2014

Like an hour ago, I took a shower. Not a big deal. I’ve been taking showers for quite a few years all ready. And by myself. So I get out of the shower and I turn the water off. Or at least I try to. So here I am in a towel with no seeing utensils like my glasses trying to figure out how to turn off the water. If you remember last fall or spring… it was last year sometime, I had an issue where I am fixing my towel holder in a towel. I have a feeling that this, fixing things in the bathroom in a towel, will be a trend in my life forever. So anyway. This was an excellent time to remember that I never learned where to shut off the water in my parents’ home and both my parents are out of town today. So I call my mother, I call my father, I call my brother’s house and I finally call my sister-in-law’s cell. My brother picks up and until I started talking to him, I remember he’s out of town too with my sister-in-law. So I go “ummm, the shower won’t stop.” “What do you mean the shower won’t stop?” “Well the faucet…it’s like puking water and I can’t stop it and I don’t know what to do.” And I know my brother is on the other end of the line face palming it because who says that the faucet is puking water, that’s the job of a faucet is to puke water.

Now remember I’m still in my towel without a seeing utensil. This doesn’t change throughout the story. So my brother tells me where to go downstairs to fix this. And the directions he says is go in the bathroom downstairs look up and there’s like a light switch thing. He knows me well enough to know that is how you direct me. That doesn’t work. Then he tells me there’s a pump thing in the corner under the stairs and theirs a silvery grey cord thing coming out, follow that and turn it off. That makes sense so we get that taken care of and we hang up. Again, my brother knows how to explain things to me in my language. I’m putting on clothes and my mother calls. Way to time that parents. It’s their problem now. I think. Hopefully.

This weekend, other than getting another year older, my foot got ran over by a wheelchair with the person in it. It turned black and blue. This happened on Saturday night and I got home and took my sock off and it was all ready black and blue. Sunday I put my boot on and I grunted and I told my mother what happened and she yelled at me for wearing boots. I’m really counting Saturday and Sunday as my birthday because Saturday was kind of a bust so I was going to wear my boots to church if I wanted to or if my mother did not. So last night when I got off of work, I had my mother, the nurse, look at my foot. First she pointed out it was bruised. Well, thank you mother, I knew that. Then she brought it up closer and poked around my bruise for signs of swelling. Each poke I told her it didn’t hurt and finally she looked up and says, that’s not what I’m poking for. I told her my theory was to tell her any immense pain I had because that helps the healing process.

As some of you know, MJ is one of my best friends. She’s a Special Ed teacher on the other side of the state. When she talks about her profession she writes or says SPED. She was talking about it in an email yesterday and I replied with: Every time I see SPED I think of Speed and then I think of drugs. Remember, hugs, not drugs. Pretty sure that wasn’t what she was expecting from me.

Yesterday was my first college roommate’s birthday so I went and celebrated that. I knew 5 of the 7 people there so I wasn’t totally awkward. There were pictures. It was a good time. End of story. I think. If it isn’t, I’ll talk about it later.

So I turn 26 on tomorrow. No big plans, just watch the niece and nephew and go into work for a few hours. I made a bigger deal out of my birthday last year because 25 was a big deal? I don’t know but, yes, last year was bigger for me. I got asked last week by my sister-in-law what I wanted for my birthday and I said lions, cheetahs and robots. I told my parents tonight that turning 26 is when responsibility (mainly because that’s when you HAVE to start paying for insurance) and then used that to justify a coffee maker. Let me clarify that. My sister-in-law order a new coffee machine and I said that’s a responsible thing, when I get responsible and I’m in a more permanent place I’m getting a coffee maker. When did I become an adult that loved coffee? For the record, I’m fighting adulthood as much as possible.

The niece and nephew are staying the night tonight and here’s some of the moments. Niece and nephew were attacking me and out of the blue, says “Go tell your boyfriend” I don’t have a boyfriend “you need to find one at school” I don’t go to school. No response to that. We were talking about my birthday and I asked what I should do for it and the nephew tells me I need a vacation and the niece agreed. First it was to go snowboarding and then it was to the beach because there’s water and sand and I could make a sand castle and a sand box. My nephew and I were talking about kindergarten and he said that he was going to start learning about monsters and was surprised that I didn’t learn about monsters in kindergarten. So I started bartering for him to teach me about monsters. So we came to the decision that he would teach me and I would give him $100 when he got married. A little bit later he said that he didn’t know who he would marry because there were only 9 girls to 11 boys in his class and he told me I couldn’t go on vacation because he’d miss me.

For those of you who don’t know, I thrive off of random funny comments I find off of my Facebook feed. Tonight I’m scrolling through and a former roommate has on a picture and it’s complaining about how much paperwork one has at work. This roommate is a preschool teacher and her sister is a kindergarten teacher and they’re talking about it and their friend says: “So a kindergarten and preschool teacher are talking about paperwork?? What do you do….grade finger paintings???” That decided it. I need more funny friends and less attractive friends. I have thought a lot about my close friends lately. Ninety eight percent of them are good looking. It makes being average looking a lot more difficult.

So I’m about 100 pages into The House Girl by Tara Conklin and as of right now I have no strong feelings about it one way or another. It’s an interesting premise but I haven’t gotten into it.

I finished The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons tonight. I wrote that, folded my hands on the desk and sighed. How does one accurately explain how I feel about this book? I have wanted to read this book for a while and I had a gift card from Christmas so I put it on my Nook. I figured that if I didn’t like it, I could always delete it off. But I have a hard time getting rid of books, even if they’re electronic. If you haven’t heard about this book, here’s what it’s about.

The golden skies, the translucent twilight, the white nights, all hold the promise of youth, of love, of eternal renewal. The war has not yet touched this city of fallen grandeur, or the lives of two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha Metanova, who share a single room in a cramped apartment with their brother and parents. Their world is turned upside down when Hitler’s armies attack Russia and begin their unstoppable blitz to Leningrad.

Yet there is light in the darkness. Tatiana meets Alexander, a brave young officer in the Red Army. Strong and self-confident, yet guarding a mysterious and troubled past, he is drawn to Tatiana–and she to him. Starvation, desperation, and fear soon grip their city during the terrible winter of the merciless German siege. Tatiana and Alexander’s impossible love threatens to tear the Metanova family apart and expose the dangerous secret Alexander so carefully protects–a secret as devastating as the war itself–as the lovers are swept up in the brutal tides that will change the world and their lives forever.

For future reference, for this post, there will be spoilers.

I have a hard time with how I feel about this book. Remember my last post where I complain that characters in books seem to fall in love immediately? This book started that rant inside me. They ran into each other kind of by accident and then they walk a few times and bam, they’re in love. It’s so quick. Who falls in love that quick? Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely love story with real problems, obstacles and there are fights between the two. But here’s my problems. First Tatiana seemed like the stupidest person alive, really immature and not ready to be in a serious relationship and then by the end of the book she was saint like and giving birth. I also felt that if they talked about her moaning during sex one more time I would have removed her voice box. Get the picture, don’t be so loud when there’s danger of people hearing you and killing the love of your life. She must have amazing breasts with how much Alexander wanted to be attached to them. But maybe he’s just a guy that likes breasts. I don’t know. How many names does that girl go by? That would drive me insane.

Alexander seems to be a great guy, does some protecting and standing up for Tatiana, loves her a lot. Good for him. But let’s really think about this. Alexander gets engaged to Dasha, Tatiana’s sister. HER SISTER! I get that characters need flaws, any kind of flaws, but really? You get engaged to the sister and the world is supposed to be okay? It would have been over for me. And he must be one hell of a lover to make Tatiana that noisy with her moaning. I did get a little annoyed with Alexander telling Tatiana to stay. Get the picture that there’s a chance she won’t stay.

I did feel bad for Tatiana. She lost her entire family. I would be devastated if I lost my family. At one point I wondered if she matured way to quickly. Then I thought about it. This is a country in war. This is a country in war that isn’t America, in the 1940’s and these people are more politically knowledgeable than I am. (or at least Alexander is) A person is going to grow up fast. So was it growing up to quick? Maybe, maybe not.

Marina, the cousin, was pointless. Someone want to explain why she was in the book?

I was fascinated by the Dimitri character. What bad thing was he going to do next? Was he going to make a pass at Tatiana or was he going to out Alexander’s secret. He is definitely a Jafar to Alexander’s Aladdin. No. Wait. That’s not an accurate analogy. Dimitri would have been the Jafar if Jafar was Aladdin’s friend-like person. What would be a good analogy for that? I don’t usually have a positive fascination with the “villain” of a story, but, I want to know why Dimitri is how he is. What makes him tick? I don’t know, but I want to know. As much of a fan I wasn’t of Tatiana’s, I did want to punch him when he made a “pass” at her near the beginning of the book.

The writing had some ups. There were some gems of lines that kept me going through the book. I like WWII history and Russia is interesting. Here are things I highlighted and commented on:

There was a section in the beginning where it talks about how everything was after like, after the revolution, after the worst but before anything good and I commented how interesting that seemed to me.

comment: I think a lot of people don’t understand war like they say they do.

Highlighted: “Really, Papa?” said Tatiana. “Which of your children would you like not to worry about?” pg 16.

There were other things but who really wants my comments and highlighting?

The next book I think I’m going to read is The House Girl by Tara Conklin.

I’m going to talk about something and it might be a little surprising coming from me and this topic has nothing to do with what Friday was. It’s love…..and books. But since I alluded to Valentine’s Day, let me have a mini-rant. I worked/orientated overnight on Friday. I’m single. Very single. And I was okay with Valentine’s this year. But when I got to work I got annoyed with how many people asked me if I was married or if I had “a man”. That phrase annoys me. Yes, you are in a relationship but that person isn’t necessarily yours. It sounds slave like to me and that is not what a relationship should be.

Anyway, love in books. It happens so fast, how can it be real? I know that most of the books I read are fiction and that the love portion of books help us believe again but really? Romeo and Juliet got married after less than a day of knowing each other, pretty sure that marriage would have been horrible in a few years. If the love wouldn’t have ended, the families would have made it miserable and then the babies would have come and it wouldn’t be pretty. Now I’m reading The Bronze Horseman and if that love didn’t pop up fast, I don’t know what did. It was like they walked together a few times and BAM, Alexander loves her.

Yeah, there are books that take their time with the love story but that’s not what sells books. I get frustrated with books every once in a while for not being predictable, love story or not. There’s 2 people that hate each other, they’re thrown together and have to deal with each other and then by the end of the book they’re in love and they’re thinking about having babies. I mean, have it end with them separating at the end with them still hating each other and glad they’re getting away from each other, don’t have the person with a terminal illness die. Have me surprised with who the killer is. I don’t care, throw me a curve ball. It’s frustrating.

I know me being critical of love is kind of a new thing on this blog but I want real life and not make believe at this point in life. I know that there are people that fall in love fast but I just really want a stable love when I’m reading right now.

So catch up on life. Last weekend I went and hung out with one of my oldest friends and my first college roommate. We tried watching “Don Jon”. That didn’t last long. That’s way more of a guy movie that it is a 3 women movie. I also decided that I need more unattractive friends. These girls I hung out with are definitely down to earth but it still cuts a girl’s ego when the majority of her friends are good looking. And my friend got a Chihuahua who, we found out, is obsessed with our other friend’s feet.

I also went to this little town last weekend to a single-women’s Valentine Banquet. My high school Sunday School teacher was speaking. We were getting out and one of the ladies I went with said something about maybe there’s a cover charge to get in this thing and she was joking because it was well-known it was free. I countered with “But aren’t we with the band? We get in free.” I guess that was funny because it was the comment that was talked about all night and being talked about the next day. I didn’t think it was that funny.

So last night I was hanging out at home for a while and “Wheel of Fortune” was on and the first puzzle came on and I solved it and I yell “I won Wheel of Fortune!” My parents think I’m crazy. Pretty sure they don’t know what to do with me. I’m grown so their job is hypothetically done until I get married, if I get married. We (my mother and I) also went to “Saving Mr. Banks”. It was quite good and I enjoyed it.

As I mentioned, I am reading The Bronze Horseman. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the book but at this moment I’m having a lot of mixed feelings about it. There’s some good writing in it but Tatiana is kind of stupid and sometimes I kind of want to punch her. It’s just a gut reaction. Poor girl is fictional and I want to punch her. Must be a tough life.

First-Catch up on my life? Yes? Okay. MJ and I have been going back and forth with this story and we can only write 15 sentences of the story and we can’t have it for more than 5 days and we have to give a rule for the other person to follow in their section of the story. It’s epic. There’s awkward pictures and a Steve and blackmail. That description doesn’t even give it justice. I have also learned through this process that I should not be writing when I’m tired because I start mixing up things like there, they’re and their. That bothers me.

I finished my CNA classes and I passed the class and now I’m orientating and then I take the state test to actually be certified.

So I’m orientating on nights tonight, so I work from 11:45-8:15, sleeping, going an hourish away tomorrow night to go to something, then Sunday, I’m going an hour in another direction to hang out with a friend. So much for a relaxing weekend.

Valentine’s Day is coming up. Boo. I’m anti-Valentine’s Day. If I were dating someone and in a serious relationship, I wouldn’t want a specific day just to show our love. Show me in the little things all the time. Open my door, tell me I’m having a good hair day, (because talking about my hair is the way to my heart, I’m kind of vain about it) hold my hand, things like that. I’m easily impressed. No need for a whole day of love. For me it’s not necessary. I’m low maintenance. Anyway.

I started my thyroid medicine this week. Knowing that something is wrong with me like my thyroid kind of bothers me. I also have eczema and knowing that there’s something I’m doing that I can’t control is unnerving every once in a while. I know that both things are very manageable but I’m kind of funny about it and I want it fixed. But I’m working on this.

Book time. I read The Destiny of Violet and Luke by Jessica Sorensen. This book is in the same series as the Callie and Kayden books I talked about last year. I’ve read other books/series by Sorensen and they haven’t impressed me as much. Here is a synopsis of the book. (there will be spoilers after the synopsis)

Luke Price’s life has always been about order, control, and acting tough on the outside. For Luke, meaningless relationships are a distraction-a way to tune out the twisted memories of his childhood. He desperately wishes he could forget his past, but it haunts him no matter what he does.

Violet Hayes has had a rough life. When she was young, she was left with no family and the memory of her parents’ unsolved murders. She grew up in foster homes, living with irresponsible parents, drugs, and neglect, and trying to fight the painful memories of the night her parents were taken from her. But it’s hard to forget when she never got closure-and she can’t stop dreaming about what happened that tragic night. To make it through life, she keeps her distance from everyone and never allows herself to feel anything.

Then Violet meets Luke. The two clash instantly, yet they can’t seem to stay away from each other. Although they fight it, they both start to open up and feel things they’ve never felt before. They discover just how similar they are. But they also discover something else: The past always catches up with you.

I loved Luke in the Callie and Kayden books. I also knew that Luke was to developed as a supporting character to not have his own book. So this book came out and I was totally excited. I get to find out more about Luke and he gets himself a girl but from reading this book, getting the girls aren’t his problem. We also find out more about Callie’s roommate, Violet. She’s a character isn’t she? And let’s start from the ending on this. That ending. Sorensen does know how to write a freaking ending. You kind of see it coming and then everything explodes into something so much larger than you expect and then you’re sitting there at 4 in the morning dwelling about these characters and wondering what’s going to happen. (That’s what I did with the first book, last year) I’m bitter that I don’t know what’s going to happen and mad that it’s not ending like I want it to end.

Characters: Let’s start with my favorite from the beginning: Luke. Before this book, I kind of knew he was a man whore, I knew he had issues with his mother, his father wasn’t around and probably a deadbeat and his sister committed suicide. Here’s what I know more. He’s more of a man whore than I realized, issues didn’t necessarily change (until you get to the end of the book) and his dad isn’t that bad of a guy. I still kind of love Luke through his drunkenness and his slutty ways. I know how he was protective of Callie and how he reacts to Violet so I respect him.

Violet: She was kind of a surprise for me. Sort of. All of Sorensen’s characters, that I’ve read, have major issues. They’re real issues and the issues aren’t skirted around. I didn’t expect some of her issues. Like the dealing and she was a virgin. Not that being a virgin is an issue, but it was something that surprised me because of how much she was alone with guys in the first 2 books, which if you think about, that’s genius. You’re getting just the narrator’s p.o.v., then you find out there’s so much more than you realize. I felt for Violet through the whole thing. She’s scared, she’s hurt and she’s surviving. Part of me kind of thought this was going to be somewhat similar to Callie and Kayden but it wasn’t. I feel like Violet was more scared.

Grayson and Seth: Seth disappointed me. He was so much more judgmental than I thought he would be. I was impressed with Grayson, I’m kind of looking forward to their story now.

The creepy “foster father” of Violet: I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. BOOOO. He was definitely a nemesis in this book. I don’t like him. Throw him in the river next book. I’m sure he owns a van and it can be parked down by the river to live in so it could look like an accident. If he doesn’t have a van, shame on him, he’s a drug dealer. He needs a van from the ’70’s.

I really liked the book. This series is what I need every once in a while.